Gary Manuel

I thought that he was having a night on the tiles.

What on Earth were they thinking of....

White Gaffa Tape is pretty durable.

I thought that the whole point of the older pylon design was that they were made out of a thin framework which became invisible from a distance. These new ones will be visible from space.

WiFi chargers are what we need!

Yes, if the charger has an HA integration (my Ohme doesn't) that allows charging to be started and stopped from HA, then it should be easily possible. As you say, Octopus might catch on if you do this regularly as it is in breach of fair use policy. To be fair, if you have done your sums right and ordered the right size battery, you shouldn't need to (ab)use this facility very often and even then, a single half hour charging slot goes a long way.

PredBat is great for complicated tariffs like Agile, but not needed for Intelligent Octopus tariff. You get much better results if you just charge to 100% at 7.5p every night and at every additional opportunity, then export any solar excess at 15p if batteries are full. Also the Octopus Plugin (and therefore Predbat) does not report Intelligent Octopus charging slots made by Ohme chargers because they work differently to vehicle APIs.

This is what the billing looks like for a day when the system decided to give me an hours charge in the early evening. To be honest, it seems to do that every time I plug in at the moment.

I've been on Intelligent Octopus for a few months now. I can confirm that whenever your car is charging, any electricity used by the house will be at cheap rate. When the car stops charging, it reverts to full rate at the end of the current half-hour slot. Very handy for automatically topping up the solar / house batteries. It's never failed to bill me correctly for a single half hour slot. Brilliant tariff.

. . . (Yes, I know it's an aeroplane.)

I must get myself one of these....

Octopus website is still evolving and some of the links need updating. The Q&A screenshot I posted earlier is hot off the press. It said the opposite about export until a few days ago but was updated to reflect this years T&Cs due to lots of people pointing out that they were contradictory. I'll try to send you the automation but it will need some work as it is written for dual inverters (everything done twice) and uses custom sensors and helpers. I'll send the sensor data too if I can pm it to you.

The price paid and times / durations cannot / will not be published in advanced. They will depend on lots of factors including weather, peak demand, how many people have signed up etc. People will naturally charge their batteries at the cheapest rate (or from solar if available). The national grid actually want people to do this because it allows them to have the generators that require a lot of time to run up already running. It's the short term availability they need, such as from batteries or hydo to meet the peak demand in the early evenings. It's all about "balancing" the grid and paying £2.25 is a good price for them to pay peak for period electricity.

These look like last years T&Cs. This years scheme DOES include export. This scheme is not aimed at delivering savings to anyone. It is aimed at encouraging people who have the ability to help the grid to cope at times when it is struggling. This is either by them reducing how much they take from the grid or by how much they feed back into the grid. The grid effect is the same and (rightly IMO) the payment is the same. I am expecting to make a decent amount from the sessions in order to reduce the payback time of the rather expensive equipment (currently 5.5 years). I can export at about 7.5kW, so a 1 hour session should earn me £2.25 x 7.5 = £16.88. I would encourage anyone who has a home battery or not to get involved in this.

Yes it is correct. I based it on what was paid during last years events. £2.25 was actually the minimum rate. The maximum was £4. These are special incentives that the National Grid fund via most of the electric companies over winter. They need to do this because the grid cannot cover the demand at peak times. I don't know where you got that from Matty, but it's wrong. Lot's of duff info on the internet and you may have found a copy of last years T&Cs, which didn't include export. This years does. These are extract from the current T&C's plus a FAQ asking the direct question about the inclusion of export during the saving sessions. HA Automation finished and good to go!

Just writing an automation to automatically charge the batteries up just before the forthcoming OctoPlus Saving Sessions begin, and then fully discharge during the session for a payback of around £2.25 per kWh. Happy to do my bit to prop up the national grid when the supply can't cope .... and get paid in return. (Not directly EV related but another benefit of the equipment).

That's the beauty of Intelligent Octopus. Edit - P.S. If you want to avoid charging your EV from your house batteries, Just move where it takes its supply to the grid side of your inverter/battery current transformer (Henley Blocks). EV charger becomes invisible to the inverter.